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NTY SENTINEL, DOUGLASVILLE, GEORGIA
THE IAN R' IH
A COUK1RY
(Continued From f ur r
hod been la the arm*. He hud
on his faith ns a Christian tojbe'tra
“United States.” It was “Un
^.States" which gave him the uniform ■
'wore, and the sword by his side. JJa'j,
tny poor Nolan, It was only been ■>.
“United States" had nicked you i
first as cno of her own confidential
men of honor, that “A. Burr” eared,
for you a straw more than for the flat-
boat men who sailed his ark for him.
I do not excuse Nolan; I only explain
to the reader why he damned his coun
try. and wished he might never hear
her name again.
He never did heur her name but once
. , again. From that moment, Septem
ber 23, 1S07, till the duy he died, May
S 11, 1883, he never heard her name
, ; again. For tmit half century ud
■-*' more he was a man without a coun-
v try.
Old Morgan, ns I said, was terribly
' shocked. If Noinn had compared
* George Washington to Benedict Ar
nold, or lmd cried, “God save King
i George,” Morgan would not have felt
5 worse. He called the court Into his
s private room, and returned in fifteen
minutes, with a face like a sheet, to
say:
t “Prisoner, hear the sentence of the
; court. The court decides, subject to
a the approval of the president, that you
never hear the name of the United
s States again.” —
Nolan laughed. But nobody else
laughed.. Old Morgan * was too
solemn, and the whole room was
hushed dead ns night for a minute.
Even Nolnn lost his swagger In a mo
ment. Then Morgnn added: “Mr.
Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans
In an armed boat, and deliver him to
the naval commander there.”
The marshal gave Ills orders^and
the prisoner was taken out of court.
"Mr. Marshal,” continued old Mor
gan, “see thpt no one mentions the
United Stntes to the prisoner. Mr.
Marshal, make my respects to Lieu
tenant Mitchell at Orlenns, and re
quest him to order that no one shull
mention the United Stntes to the pris
oner while he Is on board ship. You
will receive your written orders from
j the officer on duty hero this evening.
The court Is adjourned without day."
I have always supposed that Colonel
Morgnn himself took the proceedings
of the court to Washington City, and
explained them to Mr. .Tetferson.. Cer
tain it Is tliut the president approved
them, certain, that is, If I may believe
the men who say they have seen Ills
signature.
The plan then adopted wns sub
stantially the same which wns neces
sarily followed ever after. Perhaps
It was. suggested by the necessity of
sending him by water from Fort
Adams and Orleans. The secretary of
the navy was requested to put Nolan
on board a government vessel bound
on a long cruise, and to direct that he
should be only so far confined there
as to make It certain that he never
saw or heard of the country. We had
few long cruises then, and the navy
wns very much out of favor; and as
almost all of Gils story Is traditional,
as I have explained, I do not know cer
tainly what his first cruise was. But
the commander to whom he was In
trusted—perhaps It was Tlngey or
Shaw, though I think It was one of
the younger men—we are all old
enough now—regulated the etiquette
and the precautions of the affair, and
according to his scheme they were
carried out, I suppose, till Nolan died.
When I was second officer of the In
trepid some thirty years after, I saw
the original paper of instructions. I
have been sorry ever since that I did
hot copy the whole of it. It ran, how
ever, much in this way:
“Washington,” (with the date, which
must have been late in 1807).
“Sir—You will receive from Lieu
tenant Neale the person of Fhlllp No
lan, late n lieutenant In the United
States army.
“This person on his trial by court-
; martial expressed with an oath the
wish that he might never hear of the
United States again.
“The court sentenced him to have
his wish fulfilled.
“For. the present, the execution of
the order Is intrusted by the president
of this department.
“You will take the prisoner on board
your ship, and keep him there with
such precautions as shall prevent his
escape.
“You will provide him with such
quarters, rations, and clothing ns
would be proper for nn officer of his
late rank, If he were a passenger on
your vessel on the business of his gov
ernment.
“The gentlemen on board will make
any arrangements agreeable to them
selves regarding his society. He Is to
be exposed to no Indignity of any kind
nor Is he ever unnecessarily to be re
minded that he Is a prisoner.
1-4;; “Bui under no circumstances Is he
.ever to hear of his country or to see
Bji any Information regarding It; and you
< will especially caution all the officers
i under your command to take care that,
* in the various indulgences which may
be granted, this rale, In which his pun
ishment Is Involved, shall not be
topken. ... ..
“it is, the intention of the govern
ment that he shall never again see
the country which he has disowned.
Before the end of your cruise you will
receive orders which will give effect
to this Intention.
“Respectfully yours,
“W. SOUTHARD,
“for the Secretary of the Navy.”
If I had only preserved the whole
of this pkper, there would be no break
In the beginning of my sketch of this
story. For Captain Shaw, If It was he,
handed It to his successor In the
Charge, and he to his.
The rule adopted on board the ships
on which I-have met “The Man without
a Country” was, I think, transmitted
from the beginning. No mess liked to
have him permanently, because his
presence cut oft dll talk of home or of
the prospect of return, of politics or
letters, of peace or of War—cut off
more than half the talk men like to
have at sea. But It was always
thought too hard that he should never
meet the rest of us, except to touch
hnts, and we finally sank Into one sys
tem. He wag not permitted to talk
with the men unless nn officer wns by.
With officers he hnd unrestrained in
tercourse, as fur ns they and ho chose.
But he grew shy, though he had favor
ites: I wns one. Then the captain
always asked hint to dinner on Mon
day. Every mess In succession took
up the Invitntion In Its turn. Accord
ing to the slse-of the ship, you hnd him
at your mess more or less often at
dinner. His brenkfust he ate in his
own stateroom, he always had a state
room, which was where n sentinel, or
somebody on the watch, could see the
door. And whatever else he ate or
drank he ate or .drank alone. Some
times, when the marines or sailors had
any special jollification, they were per
mitted to Invite “Plain-Buttons," us
they called him. Then Nolnn was sent
with some officer, and the men were
forbidden to speak of homb while he
was there. They called him “Plain-
Buttons,” because, while he always
chose to .wear a regulation army uni
form, he was not permitted to wear
the army button, for the reason that
It bore either the Initials or the !n-
slgnlu of the country he had disowned.
I remember, soon after I joined the
navy, I was on shore with some of the
older officers from our ship and from
the Brandywine, which we had met at
Alexandria. We had leave to make a
party and go up to Cairo and the Pyra
mids. . As wo jogged along some of
the gentlemen fell to talking about No
lnn, and someone told the system
which was adopted from the first ubout
his books und other reading. As he
wns almost never permitted to go on
shore, even though the vessel lay in port
for months, his time, at the best,
hung heavy; and everybody was per
mitted to lend him books, if they were
not published In America and made no
allusion to it. These were common
enough In tho old days, when people
In the other, hemisphere talked of the
United States ns little ns we do of
Paraguay. He had almost all the for
eign papers that came into the ship,
sooner or later; only somebody must
go over them first, and cut out any
advertisement or stray paragraph that
alluded to America. Right In the
.midst of one of Napoleon’s battles, or
one of Canning’s speeches, poor Nolan
would find a great hole, because on the
back of the page of that paper there
had been an advertisement of a packet
for New York, or a scrap from the
president’s message. I say this was
the first time I ever heard of this plan,
which afterwards I hnd enough, and
Big A
Mr. and.Mrs Floyd Wedding-
on of near Douglasville, at-
ended the Smith funeral and
Dent a part of the week with
.datives.
L. M. Lambert and family
spent the week end near Liberty.
Wesley Moore made a flying
rip to Atlanta Friday but came
back not so fast, on a mule.
Mr. and Mrs. Will Grey spent
'unday with Mr. and Mrs. W.
13. Hudson.
Mr. and Mrs. Lone Butler at
tended pleaching at Bearear
Sunday.
Mrs. E. J. Williams and daugh
ter, Miss Siidie, spent Sunday
with Mrs. Rilla Lambert.
Oren Williams of Bill Arp,
spentSunday with Kinney Smith.
Mrs. Mary Lou Creel is spend
ing some time with her mother,
Mrs. Jake Weddington, of Doug-
lasvilU.
John Dorsett spent Sunday
with Mr. and Mrs. I. G. Smith.
Mr. and Mrs. Roam M. Smith
and babies spent Sunday with
Mr. and 'Mrs. R. C. Williams of
Bill Arp. . J
B. A. Hudson lost a nice youifg
cow Sunday. She fell in an
eight-foot gulley. Olin Bearden
also lost a cow. She drowned
in a branch not over six or[eight
inches deep. L, K. W.
Too Much.
“Thpre Is such a thing as carrying
mo’s love for poetry too far,” stated
j Grout P. Smith. “Yesterday while my
! wife was attempting to hang up a por-
j trait of the poet Goethe—I reckon lio
was a poet, or something—she fell off
. .rom the atepladder on to the cat,
. -vrcnching her back and also that of
; 'he cat."—Kansas City Star.
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more than enough, to do with. I re
member it, because poor Phillips, who
was of the party, as soon as the allu
sion to reading was made, told a story
of something which happened at the
Cape of Good Hope on Nolan’s first
voyage; and it is the only thing I ever
knew of that voyage. They had
touched at the Cape, and had done the
civil thing with the English admiral
and the fleet, and then, leaving for a
long cruise up the Indian ocean, Phil
lips had borrowed a lot of English
books from an officer, which, !n those
days, as Indeed In these, was quite a
windfall. Among them, as the Devil
would order, was the “Lay of the Last
Minstrel,”* which they had all of them
heard of, but which most of them had
never seen. I think it could not have
been published long. Well, nobody
thought there could be any risk of any
thing national in that, though Phillips
swore old Shaw had cut out the
“Tempest” from Shakespeare before
he let Nolan have it, because he said,
“The Bermudas ought to be ours and,
by Jove, should be one day.” So No
lan was permitted to join the circle
one afternoon when a lot of them sat
on deck smoking and reading aloud.
People do not do such things so often
now, but when I was young we got
rid of a great deal of time so. Well,
so it happened that in his turn Nolan
took the book and read to the others;
and he read very well, as I know. No
body In the circle knew a line of the
poem, only It was all magic and bor
der chivalry, and was ten thousand
years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily
through the fifth caqto, stopped a min
ute and drank something, and then be
gan, without a thought of what was
coming—
Breath os there the man, with soul
dead,
Who never to himself hath said—
(To < ■ - CvUluAuetl)
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